*In the beginning there was George Lucas, filmmaker, storyteller; and from his vivid imagination emerged characters like Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith. "I wanted to use the Vader character as a kind of shadow, behind his creator, almost enveloping him," says Joe Ciardiello, an accomplished illustrator whose work appears regularly in The New York Times and many national magazines. This canny portrait was initially rejected in the '90s because of a Lucasfilm policy that only permitted artist Drew Struzan to render likenesses of Mr. Lucas. *Source: Back of card